Towards smarter carbon capture, storage and utilisation-using soft and active matter

The increased presence of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere, acting as a greenhouse gas, puts humanity in a difficult position. To halt or even reverse global warming, we must rapidly develop and deploy new, improved strategies that are both scalable and efficient. While conventional approaches such as carbon capture and storage and direct air capture have made significant progress, limitations in efficiency, cost, and scalability persist. Here, we briefly review existing strategies and provide an overview of developments at the colloidal level. We introduce pioneering approaches and argue that colloidal systems offer an underexplored yet potentially transformative route to bridge this gap.